The alphabet Crossover with Numb3rs
by Vanzelfsprekend
Summary: Los Angeles, two teams, ready for a race against the clock when someone starts attacking people at random, leaving his print behind on them. The race to stop him gets even more urgent, when he starts attacking the teams members ch 2
1. Chapter 1

So first a bit of an introduction, I'm a new writer, and with new I mean, really new, this is the second story that I'm writing, but it's my first one to ever put on the internet.

I'm from Belgium, so I don't really speak English, my first language is Dutch and my second French, but I found out that I liked it more to write in English.

Disclaimer (or whatever the heck it is): I do not own any characters of Without a trace nor of Numb3rs.

Short introduction: A man loves his co-worker, and she loves him, even their boss can't seem to stop them from being together. But when they're paths cross with a serial attacker, their relationship gets put on the thin line.

Will their relationship get through this? Will they?

3,850,000 INHABITANTS

26 LETTERS

2 TEAMS

1 PSYCHO MANIAC

The early dawn was still there when Tess Xeller left her house. The clock had not even passed the big five, but she had to get to work already. She had parked her car some blocks away from her apartment last night, after not finding a decent spot close to it. Although normally she liked walking, now, with the cold and the dark, she was eagerly awaiting the moment when she'd see her car ahead of her, and being able to get in it.

She had a weird feeling, and as she pulled her sharp even tighten around her neck, someone suddenly grabbed her from behind. She tried to turn herself around to hit him, but the person held her arms tightly behind her. This person was certainly a man, and even more certainly he was a lot stronger then her.

As she went over the possibilities of what he wanted from her, she started to panic. She started to struggle against his grasp even more, and screamed for help when he pulled her jacket off of her, she was starting to get what was happening to her.

It was early but there were apartments all around her and they must have heard her scream before her was able to shut her up. But something in her gut told her that no one was going to help her and she had to deal with this on her own. Tess started to cry when the attacker succeeded in taking off her sweater, and she nearly lost hope.

Her husband was only two blocks away from her, still sleeping and not knowing what was happening to his wife.

Her attacker who had been covering almost her entire face with her own jacket, making it for her impossible to scream or see him, now suddenly removed that, but she couldn't get any look of him, as he immediately covered her eyes with his hands.

"Please, don't do this." She begged, her tears now dropping of her skin, and the fact that he had made no attempt at touching her other then what had been necessary for taking of her jacket and sweater, made her not any less scared, but more confused.

He of course didn't answer to her, and now put a cloth in her mouth, although she couldn't really call it a cloth, as she believed that it was her jacket again. She couldn't see a thing until suddenly he removed his hand, and she saw first nothing, but then his arm and the street in front of her. For a second she thought he had let her go, but then she suddenly felt a white hot pain on her arm. He was burning her right arm with something, and only the cloth stopped her from screaming alive.

The pain was unbearable and she started to struggle again, now knowing that he was planning to kill her, and making her suffer incredibly while doing that.

What felt like hours were actually just seconds, but when he removed the cause of the burning on her arm, the pain did not seize at all, stars were appearing in front of her eyes, and she didn't have a clue anymore what was happening around her. It took a while to realise that her attacker had gone, had just left her there. The pain was subduing but was still very much there. She was still crying and didn't dare to look at her arm, but she stood straight. She took two steps before she fell into darkness.

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When Samantha Spade woke up at seven due to her alarmclock, which every morning was able to wake her up but not her boyfriend, and looked at the other side of her bed, she was satisfied to see, the man that she loved, lying next to her, vast asleep.

She pushed it off, knowing it would ring again in five minutes, but she knew that she shouldn't put it off because it wouldn't be the first time that she fell back to sleep, which caused them both to be late.

She still found it hard to believe that she and Martin had made their twenty month relationship anniversary, but now that that had past several days ago, it being celebrated on a magic way, with her and Martin going a weekend away, but now she was already looking forward to the twenty-four months anniversary, two years.

Martin mumbled something in his sleep as but didn't wake up, and although she knew they both had to get out of bed, she shuffled closer to him, putting his arm around her.

"Good morning." Martin mumbled in her ear, but he made no attempt to move.

"It's past seven." She mumbled back, but she too made no attempt to move.

"I know." He mumbled but he only drew her closer to him enjoying the warmth of her body in his arms.

"That means that we should get up." She said as she finally got the strength to get out of his arms and get out of the bed.

"Jack will kill us if we get late again." She yelled at him from the bathroom. "And he's already mad at us." She continued, knowing that he was probably still lying on the bed.

"At me, you mean." He replied before finally pushing himself straight. "We both know he's not just mad at me because I, sometimes, come late into work." He said, before entering the bathroom and kissing her forehead before going to pick up his cloths.

"Martin." She sighed, she did not intend to lead the conversation to this topic, they had discussed this enough, and she already regretted saying his name.

"Sam, me coming late into work is not what is pissing him off, me coming into work with a certain cute blond, that is what really is pissing him off." He said, before wrapping his arms around her, as she tries to brush her hair properly in the mirror.

"Martin." She giggled as he kissed her in the neck.

"But you're right, we shouldn't give him any more reason to be mad at us."

"He'll have to deal with it."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, he can't be mad forever because it will not change."

"Now that's what I wanted to hear." He said to her, smiling at the blonde beauty in his arms.

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	2. Chapter 2

Now because I posted this here, and most of you who read this, have probably never heard, or never watched Numb3rs, I'll give a little bit of information.

The cast of numb3rs exists out of Don Eppes, the leader of the LA team and his team members, Megan Reeves, she also a profiler, David Sinclair and Colby Granger. Don's brother Charlie Eppes, is a mathematical genius, and he helps his brother in some case, because as he says himself: "We all use math every day; to predict weather, to tell time, to handle money. Math is more than formulas or equations; it's logic, it's rationality, it's using your mind to solve the biggest mysteries we know.", he helps them solve a lot of case, together with the help of Larry Fleinhardt, who is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist, he also Works at the same university as Charlie, and Amita Ramanujan who also works at CalSci and is Charlie's girlfriend.

The show numb3rs focuses especially at the relationship between Charlie and Don, (there are like one of the cutest brothers on tv) and their father Alan.

I hope this will help you.

Chapter two:

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Two days, it was two days, that Charlie had a little bit of freedom again, only two days, he must say. The last case that Don had him working for had taken more then a week to solve, and that entire week, he had not been free.

His brother had called him constantly, as had done the rest of his team, giving him new information, asking how long he needed to come up with something, or just checking in to see how he was doing, and that had only been the hours that he hadn't been at the FBI-office.

Because when he was in the FBI-office, they didn't even needed to call him, they would just pop in, and tell him exactly the same as they did over the phone, except now, he couldn't just simply hang up on them.

So he had been more then thrilled to be able to catch the guy and go home. But he knew, that it would not take that long, to get another call from Don, and although he would never admit it, he actually already looked forward to being able to help Don again.

So when the call came, Charlie didn't really mind it at all, although it would again take him away from freedom, he had to admit, he started to like being settled.

You didn't have a real freedom, if you were the boyfriend of Amita, anyway, and he liked working together with his brother more then anything, it gave him the chance to see his brother more.

"Charles Eppes." He answered his phone, the caller had made it clear it was his brother.

"Charlie." He heard back, his brother sounded relieved that he picked up, that meant it was urgent, which out ruled everything except that this call was about an important case. "We need your help."

"I'm listening." He answered, only now dropping the pen he had been holding.

"We've got a case, a weird one, two woman have been attacked in the last few days, no rape, no murder, no critical injury, except a burn on their left arm."

"A burn?"

"Yeah, a letter."

"Which one?" Charlie asked, already intrigued, yet he didn't really know how he could help.

"That's the point, it's a different one. First we had a C, and then an S. What do they have in common?"

"You think it's a message?" There were multiple things that linked C and S together, but most of those usually didn't really help in such an investigation, it probably had to be a hidden message, but there had to be more.

"Well, it has to be."

"Ok, I'll come to the office."

"Thanks Charlie."

"No problem." He replied, before hanging up and sighing deeply. Well freedom was indeed over.

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They were not late, Martin had driven like a mad man, and Sam had even then pushed him to drive faster, but they hadn't been late.

They had also not caused any accidents, which they were both very happy about, because there had been times where it had been close.

"Jack's still gonna be pissed off." Martin said to Sam as they stood in the elevator, both checking their watches every few seconds, still not believing they were even 5 minutes early.

"So?" She replied back to him, and he wrapped his arms around her pushing her to the side of the elevator, before bringing his lips down on hers.

"We're at work." She protested, but she didn't struggle as he kissed her again. "We promised to act professionally at work."

"So?" He asked her now.

"So, we said this morning that we would try not to give Jack any other reason to be pissed at us."

"He's not here, is he?" He asked her further, knowing she was absolutely right, but it was just so damn hard sometimes, to look at her, and not being allowed to kiss her every second of every day.

She smiled against his lips, but when the elevator dinged, telling them they had arrived at the right floor, they quickly separated.

She tried to make the blush that had appeared on her cheeks disappear, while he watched her get even more redder, and smiled to himself, god, he loved that woman so much.

As they walked towards the bullpen, both needing only a few seconds, to fall into their pure professionally manner, the distance between them increased subtle and they didn't even smile when they entered it.

"There you are." Jack said, his voice only slightly angry, but that was always there the last weeks, no the last months, a lot of months, ever since he found out about his two agents dating, and in love.

"We're not late." Sam answered his angry voice, with a little angry voice of her own, as they walked to the conference table and sat down, next to each other, as Danny, Vivian and Elena, had taken the other spots, they smiled at them both, as they sat down, and it wasn't until then that Sam noticed that they all had the same file in their hands.

"Who have we got?" She asked, as she glanced to the file in Danny's hands, who was sitting next to her, and then looking at Martin at the other side of her.

"Daisy Moore." Vivian said, as it took Jack a few seconds too long, for her like to answer. "She disappeared yesterday, her fiancé called it in, she's 24 and works as a model."

"A model?" Martin questioned looking back at Sam, as Elena lend him her file to look.

"Yeah, she works as a model from when she was 20 and apparently she's pretty successful."

"Does she have any enemies?"

"Not that we know yet, but that's what we're going to try to find out first." Jack replied.

Another day at work had begun.

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"Charlie, glad you made it, buddy." Don said, as he saw his brother entering the office.

The rest of the team was there and they were just exploring all possible things of why their perpetrator was attacking their victims, leaving a burn of a letter on their left arm as a single reason for his attack.

"Hey." He said, as he walked towards the table, putting his computer down, and looking at the pictures of two woman on the screen, they were both beautiful but that was the only thing that they had in common. One was brown the other's hair was red. The first had curls and the second had straight hair.

Even their eye colors were different, it seemed almost like the perpetrator had done this on purpose.

"Okay, who are they?" He asked, but then he suddenly stopped, he normally didn't ask that, he gets a code, decodes it and that was mostly it. Was it because he also normally didn't see who the victims were, or was it something else?

Don was silent for a while, watching his brother questioningly before walking up to the screen.

"This is Hailey Wyatt." He said pointing at the brown, curly one. "She's 24, the attack took place at 5.30 a.m. on 4 May. And then this is Olivia Aiken, she's 33, the attack took place at 22.30 pm on 7 May. We don't know that much more."

"Ok." He replied to his brother, typing a few things down before looking back at the screen. Then there suddenly appeared a map with two spots.

"Those are the places of the attack." Don said, before turning his back to the screen and faced them all.

"We need to know what links these girl, and.." He stopped as his cell suddenly rang, and he doubted a few seconds before picking it up.

"Don Eppes." He said, before looking back at the screen behind him.

He listened a while, before suddenly motioning David to go back to the pictures of the two woman. "How old is she?" He asked, glancing at the pictures up and down.

"Can you send me her photo?"

"Ok, thanks." He said, before hanging up and turning back to his team and Charlie who waited patiently for him to say something.

"We've got a new victim. Her name is Tess Xeller, she was attacked last night at about 5.00 a.m., the hospital who treated her called us, after she left. Apparently she fainted at the side of the road, probably due to shock. She had no major injuries, except there was an E burned on her left arm."

"How old is she?"

"36. It appears that we really do have a serial attacker."

"Charlie, can you do anything with the information you have?"

"I don't know Don, I mean this could be anything, and this guy could be fooling, I could try to find a pattern, but I can't make anything out of an C,S and E."

"Well, start working on that pattern, we need everything we can get, I'm pretty sure that this guy is not yet finished."

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	3. Chapter 3

Chapter three:

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"The neighbor said that you returned early from a trip to LA, why is that?" Sam asked Daisy Moore's fiancé. Jack had sent her off to here on her own, and she had first questioned Daisy's neighbor, she herself was not sure why she had done that, but the neighbor had given her some pretty interesting stuff.

"Something happened in LA."

"What?" She asked, Brian seemed to be reluctant to tell it, and she knew that how more a person tried to hide something, or get away with it by saying it wasn't important, how more interesting, and more helpful it was to solving a case.

"Daisy got attacked."

"And you forgot to mention this when you reported her missing, because……?" She asked, knowing immediately that his indeed would help them further in the case and surprised that Brian would not mention that.

"She wanted to forget it, we both don't even know the reason for the ….."

"Of course she would want to try to forget it, but your fiancée is a famous model, I mean…"

"He did not try to rape her." He suddenly interrupted me, his voice rising, and some kind of anger suddenly surfacing. "Like I said, I don't know why she got attacked, and she doesn't either."

"What exactly happened?" I asked, trying to throw this around, to get some better information, and to try not pissing the guy off.

"She was walking on her own, because she had gone to her mother, while I had gone to a shop, and because it was only a few blocks from her mother's house to our hotel, she decided to walk home on her own, it wasn't even late, just before dinner, about six or seven o'clock. She told me someone had grabbed her from behind, he had appeared out of nowhere, and she couldn't see his face or anything, it was already dark, he removed her jacket, and …." He stopped, burying his head in his hands, and although I knew this had to be hard from it, but the pause he took seemed to last forever.

After a while he tilted his head, and just when I wanted to ask for him to continue, he continued out of himself, but he had a pretty hard time doing it.

"She tried to fight him off, but he was too strong, and then he removed her blouse, and she thought he wanted to rape her ……"

He stopped again, but this time he kept staring at me instead of burying his head in his hands, I noticed tears appearing in his eyes, and suddenly there was this weird feeling, that caught me and my throat suddenly felt dry and painful.

"He barely touched her again, except that he burned her with something."

"Burned her?"

"Yes, her left arm, it was quiet infected, but the doctor thought it was something like an X burned on her arm."

"And X like in the letter X?" I asked, by throat still dry but luckily it wasn't very hearable in my voice.

"Yes, now why would a man do that? Because after he had done that, he just left, ran away, she was too shaken to do that, and she just sat there for a while. I found her there, at about ten, she was still shaken, we went home the day after that."

"You didn't realize that whoever has done this, might be not finished with her?"

"I…. oh god….. oh my god…."

Cleary he hadn't, she thought, which made her think herself, so the attacker attacked her in LA, would he have followed her here to NY and then took his chance? It didn't make sense, but it seemed that nothing did, why would someone burn an X on someone's arm? And not do anything else. Not wanting to be gruesome, but he is a guy and she is a model, so beautiful and totally unprotected and vulnerable at the attack.

The rest of my conversation with Brian went not at the best, he had trouble breathing, as he thought about what I said, but he did give me everything that Daisy had remembered about her attacker, and the right place of the attack. Only five minutes after he had starting saying " Oh god." Over and over again, I was outside of the house, still reeling about what I had just uncovered.

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It was already two hours, that he was trying to find a pattern in this case, and it was not working well, it was working so bad, that Charlie was starting to feel frustrated, partly about himself, and partly because maybe they wasn't a readable pattern yet, which meant, harshly said, that he needed a next victim to go further.

There was something about this case, he didn't really know what, but something that made him feel bad about this. The places where the victims were attacked, were so random, that it was no coincidence, when somebody wanted to choose some random places, it was never really random, because random was impossible, or you have a pattern, or you try not to have a pattern, but end up creating one anyway, but here, nothing, there was nothing that linked the places, nor the victims together.

They were three beautiful woman, but that was it.

Not their looks, all very different, not their work, also different, not their family life, nothing connected these three woman, so that left one thing, he picked his victims at random. But how? If you pick somebody at random you still have places that you choose, or …..

Maybe our perpetrator walked around, choose a victim and then followed her until a point where he would attack, it was an explanation.

"How you're doing Charlie?" He suddenly heard, he hadn't even heard a door opening nor somebody coming in, but there he was, Don, hoping that Charlie could give him something that could help him.

"I can't seem to find anything, about this. There's no pattern, Don, nor for the victims nor for the places… I'm sorry." He added, as his look told Charlie that there were getting nowhere with this case, and the fact that he told him that he wasn't going to find anything, would not get them further.

"So this guy is a genius?" Don asked him. That got him thinking, this man could just be very lucky, but if he was doing this on purpose, he must be, particularly smart, or again lucky.

"I don't know for sure, it could be, but then again, this guy could just be having luck, or just be smart, not too smart but just smart, I'm sorry to say this, Don. But there are only three victims attacked, finding a solid pattern there, that would tell you, exactly where his next strike will be, or who his next strike will be, is already pretty though. If this guy is lucky, then it makes it extremely difficult, and if this guy is smart, and evaluates every thing, or even is a genius, it makes it impossible."

"So you need a new victim." He told Charlie, and he found it better not to answer that, he could lie, and tell him that he would find something, but then he'd be lying and he had already, a long time ago, figured out he's not that good at that, then if he would say yes, it would only make them both more disappointed.

"What about the letters?" Don asked.

"Well, that could be everything, I've made a list of the words that it could mean, but considering we don't know if it's the original order to make the word, nor how long it could be, the list's pretty long." He said, as he picked up a few papers from a table close by and gave it too him.

"But then it could be also something else, a name, a code for something, a place, like I said, this could be everything."

"So it also gives us pretty much nothing." He said, and again Charlie didn't answer to that. He had already decided that he was not giving up, and he was already going through all the other systems that he could use to find a pattern, so when Don said another few things and left, he had not heard him, nor had he realized that he had parted until a while later.

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After they had heard about Daisy's attack, Jack's team soon discovered much more. Considering such an attack is rarely if not never a coincidence, or a random attack that means nothing more, Jack had decided to put himself and Viv, on finding out how this attack was not random.

And they actually did not find anything that would give them a reason, why Daisy was not just a random victim, it gave them something entirely different.

Similar attacks. A few of them, and all had happened in LA.

"Okay, so for all that I could find about the attacks, none of the other victims have disappeared, they're all quiet shaking up, but their fine, with their families or someone else." Jack told the rest of the team, they were all sitting at the conference table, except he, who was standing, and he had informed them all about the other attacks in LA.

"So, she was a victim of a serial attacker?" Elena questioned, although the question was a bit redundant, although no one had said it out loud, they wasn't anyone in the room who wasn't already convinced that they were indeed dealing with a serial attacker.

"Yes, and there's a team in LA, who is on the case."

"So, we're just gonna let them handle it?" Martin asked, and his voice already betrayed that he was not agreeing with that. Sam who was again sitting next to him, squeezed him hand, as a way to calm him down, if Jack would say yes.

"No, because her disappearance, although it looks like it, could very well be about something entirely else then that attack."

"So how are we going to do this?" Viv asked.

"I want two of you to go to LA, to help the team over their on this case, and find more things that could help us in Daisy's Moore case, in the meantime the rest that stays here, will continue working on this case, searching for another angle that could explain her disappearance."

No one protested, because no one disagreed with him, but every one was thinking about who would go, some didn't want to go, some didn't really care, and some felt like it'd be nice to go. But it was up to Jack to decide who'd go and who'd stay here."

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End file.
